With continuous development of a software defined network (SDN) concept, a development speed of an OpenFlow network is also continuously increasing. Communications devices of the OpenFlow network mainly include an OpenFlow switch (OFS) for data forwarding and an OpenFlow controller (OFC) for logically centralized control over the entire network. In the Internet, an autonomous system (AS) is a small unit that has authority to independently decide which type of routing protocol should be used in the system. This network unit may be a simple network or may be a network group controlled by one or more ordinary network administrators, and is an individual and manageable network unit (such as a university or an enterprise). A large operator may have multiple autonomous systems, such as a wireless network autonomous system, an Internet Protocol (IP) core network autonomous system, or an IP access network autonomous system. In the present disclosure, a same management domain refers to one or more autonomous systems belonging to a same operator or community of interests. That is, in the same management domain, a scenario may exist in which multiple OpenFlow networks coexist or an OpenFlow network coexists with a non-OpenFlow network (such as a traditional IP network). Therefore, how to obtain a hybrid network topology in real time to uniformly schedule network resources in the management domain so as to ensure quality of service (QoS) becomes an important research topic.
In the prior art, a method for implementing scheduling of network status information between peer controllers (such as OFCs) is provided. In the method, using a west-east bridge mechanism, an update message is transferred using a publishing and subscription (publish/subscribe) system, so as to implement synchronization between the peer controllers, and a network topology managed by another controller may be obtained between the peer controllers using a topology recovery (VIEW-REFRESH) message.
In a process of implementing the present disclosure, the inventor finds that the prior art has at least the following problem.
The method is implemented by newly adding a VIEW-REFRESH message, and a specification regarding to the VIEW-REFRESH message is not standardized. Therefore, at present, a device that supports a standard format of the Border Gateway Protocol (which will be referred to as the Border Gateway Protocol or BGP herein) cannot identify or use the message. In addition, the method is applicable only to determining of a network topology of a single OpenFlow network or a management domain that has only multiple OpenFlow networks, and a network topology of a management domain in which an OpenFlow network coexists with a non-OpenFlow network cannot be determined.